


A No-Good Punk

by PrecariousSauce



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kayfabe Compliant, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8474251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrecariousSauce/pseuds/PrecariousSauce
Summary: The first time Dean Ambrose's life was saved by someone pulling him out of a dumpster.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is going to be part of a series going forward and since this is going to be a running theme I'll point out that for the purposes of this series everyone's names (if they are in fact going by a name that's like… a name a person can have rather than something ridiculous) that they use for their character with the WWE will be considered the character's real name. That'll make more sense as more of these go up.

**January, 2011**

Things are bad right now. And when things are bad, everything recedes. The world around him looks like it’s a million miles away at any point. Sounds are faint and indistinct. The only things that come to him clearly are anything he can feel with his own two hands. Right now he feels the rough, sandpaper texture of peeling paint, rust and simple dirt as Dean Ambrose climbs one-handed into a dumpster. He wonders for a brief second if it’s empty or not– Dean gets his answer when he swings over the side and lands hard on a trash bag. 

He just snickers; the dumpster is dark, enclosed, and private. That’s enough. That’s _perfect_. The drugs and his own brain (fucked up regardless of what shit he puts in his body) make it hard for him to feel anything outside of what his hands are touching, but if he concentrates he can _maybe_ feel the blood trickling down his side, seeping into his t-shirt and ratty hoodie he’s had for over five years. Dean tries to remember the match that put him here but honestly he can’t remember anything beyond the moment that knife or saw or whatever the hell it was dug into his side– hell, he’s surprised he managed to get dressed and leave the building of his own accord.

But he can’t be surprised that he’s here. For much longer than he should’ve been Dean was anticipating that this is exactly how he’d die: alone, fucked up, and bleeding out from some shitty little wound he got wrestling in a warehouse for next to no money in the worst part of Chicago. He tries to take stock of things as well as his muddled, slow-moving mind will let him.

 

He doesn’t do a very good job, treading consciousness like water and focusing on his returning senses– he learns from the sound of their skittering legs that there are bugs crawling around in this dumpster, he can vaguely see a streetlight above him, and he can hear some car rumbling to a stop nearby.

 

 

Just before he dips into another bout of unconsciousness, Dean has enough presence of mind to regret one thing. 

 

 

 

He didn’t see his cousin one last time.

 

 

 

 

And then, everything is dark.

 

 

 

 

Dean is quite literally pulled back into the world of the living by a hand gripping his shirt and hoodie. Someone he can’t see yanks him out of the dumpster, dragging him as easily along the sidewalk as someone would carry a kitten by the scruff of their neck. Despite how weak he feels Dean’s instincts take over and he’s thrashing in this mystery person’s grip, throwing elbows and hands every which way but loose in a desperate attempt to get free.

He can hear the person sigh, “For God’s sake-“ before they wrap one arm around his middle and with the other hand forcefully hold Dean’s head still so he’s looking straight ahead. With vision that’s finally clear Dean can see his dumpster being picked up by a garbage truck and emptied out into it. Dean just blinks; for as much as he was welcoming death however long ago, he wasn’t quite ready for all the gruesome ways it could’ve happened if he’d been thrown in along with the rest of the garbage. He’s not sure if he should be grateful or disappointed.

In his contemplative state Dean is easily dragged just inside the mouth of a nearby alleyway. The stranger props him up against the wall in a way that’s rough and clumsy but forceful. Dean can now see his “saviour” is a man in a hoodie just as ratty as his own with odd facial hair (they looked like muttonchops but Dean was never sure what a muttonchop was actually supposed to be) and tattoos that start at his wrists and disappear beneath the sweatshirt’s sleeves. Some of Dean’s blood is on the palm of his hand, and the man is muttering all sorts of curses as he rummages around through a backpack. 

“Son of a bitch,” the guy breathes as he fishes out a brown bottle, “This is _not_ what I wanted to do tonight.”

Dean lets his head loll back and hit the brick wall behind him, slurring, “You and me both, brother. I was expecting to bleed out in there. You kinda ruined my plans.”

The hooded guy shakes his head as he pushes Dean’s clothes out of the way, liberally splashing what Dean supposes is some kind of antiseptic or alcohol onto his wound with an obviously untrained hand; “Well, tough shit. I’m a scumbag but I’m not the kind of scumbag that’ll let that fly on my watch.”

“But you are the kind of scumbag who carries around medical supplies,” Dean remarks as the guy replaces the antiseptic and pulls out a needle, thread, and a rag that in this light looks clean enough.

“You need them in my line of work,” the guy growls, dark eyes alight as he mops up the area around Dean’s wound and threads the needle, “Especially when the ‘professionals’ who should do this shit for you shouldn’t even be out of fucking medical school.”

Dean’s laugh is warbling and half-choked; “Damn, _someone’s_ angry.” He’s aware of the needle piercing his skin but he’s more focused on the look on the hooded guy’s face, frustrated and a slight bit tired, but determined. All to help some guy he found in a dumpster.

“What’s your name?” the hooded guy says around a thread held tight in his teeth.

“Jon Moxley,” he mumbles.

The hooded guy raises an eyebrow; “That came fast. Not the real one, I’ll bet.”

Dean’s grin is lopsided and shows too many teeth; “Not even close to it.”

The guy pauses in his stitching and stares at him, his eyes swimming somewhere between frustration and pity; “Exactly how high are you?”

Dean’s head lolls to the side; “High enough that I can’t feel these stitches.”

The hooded man sighs like a disappointed parent as he gets back to work; “Well at least that’s something.” 

Dean snickers; “In my experience the only people who lurk around places like this are trying to get their next fix of something or looking to die. Considering the ‘holier than thou’ look in your eyes I’m guessing you’re looking for the latter?”

The man’s grin is cold; “I was looking for a fight. A _real_ one.”

Dean’s low whistle wobbles around like a drunkard; “Tough guy, huh?”

The cold grin grows sharp; “The toughest.”

Dean tries to pick his head up and fails; “You a wrestler?”

The guy snorts; “What the Hell else is there to do for jackasses like us?”

Dean raises an eyebrow; “Like _us?_ ”

The next stitch is forceful; “Don’t try to be slick. This is my city. I’ve wrestled in that same warehouse you staggered out of and gotten wounds just like this one in there. You’re not the first strung out, bleeding out, idiot wrestler with a death wish I’ve dragged out of that exact dumpster and…” the man pauses for a loaded moment, then lets out a long, shuddering sigh, “And, fuck me, you will _not_ be the last.”

Dean isn’t the most sensitive of people and not the best at reading others, but he doesn’t have to be right now. He can tell from the soft trembling of his hands as he tied off his last stitch to the intensity of his gaze; This man is burdened by passion. He cares, and god save him he wished he didn’t. He’s the wrong person for that kind of passion, too rough and angry and defiant, too mean and stubborn and volatile. Too deeply cynical to get anything but sick and outraged when he felt that burning investment in people and things and causes flare up, and still too deeply cynical to feel anything but slightly dissatisfied even when he got what he wanted.

Dean swallows hard. He’s the exact same way– he just cuts and runs before he got attached to anything. This man can’t cut and run anymore. He doesn’t know how, and even if he did his pride wouldn’t let him.

The guy digs around in his backpack some more before shrugging; “I don’t have just one thing that’ll cover that up all the way, but I _do_ have two bandaids I can kind of get to cover it.”

Dean stares blankly at him. Maybe it’s the drugs still floating around in his system, maybe it’s that abruptly _normal_ statement after how deep Dean’s thoughts had gotten, whatever it is Dean can’t help but duck his head down and start giggling. The man watches him dissolve helplessly into laughter and doesn’t join in, but he does raise an eyebrow and smile.

Dean finally finds the wherewithal to speak again as the hooded man sticks a pair of bandaids over his wound; “Where you wrestling now?”

He shrugs; “All over.”

Dean snorts; “That’s not an answer.”

“I know it’s not,” the hooded man replies as he zips up his backpack, “But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”

“You’ve gotta be in the big leagues,” Dean ventures, rolling his neck around to hear it crack, “You wouldn’t be so jaded if you were still down here in the shit with us indie fucks trying to climb up to the top.”

The man stands up and snickers, “Nah, I’m just naturally bad-tempered. Always have been– My whole life… I’ve just been a no good punk.”

Like cracking a whip, Dean sobers up in an instant, blue eyes going as wide as they can. Sure he was constantly busy and high more often than he wasn’t and had no money but of _course_ he fucking watches WWE. And now that he’s lucid he has the presence of mind to be completely fucking flabbergasted that _CM Punk_ was standing in this shitty back alley with him and had just saved his life.

All Dean can do is wheeze, “Oh.”

“Hey,” Punk snaps, leaning back down to glare at him, “Promise me you’ll get back to wherever the Hell you’re staying tonight, alright?”

Dean nods.

“And try to fucking get clean,” Punk continues, “I saw the match that got you hurt– You’re good. I wanna get in there with you, I know we’d tear the damn house down. But I’m not gonna wrestle some useless strung-out junkie, understand?”

Dean nods again while trying to process the fact that _CM Punk_ had not only watched his no doubt awful match but had also followed him out to keep him from dying alone in a dumpster.

Punk looks around for a second, rubs his chin, then nods; “That’s all I can think of. Take care of yourself. I better never see you in another fucking dumpster.”

Punk stands back up and starts to walk away, but he stops at the curb, then heaves a sigh; “You know… The wrestling isn’t so bad in Florida. Tough guys are down there. Good place for an idiot who wants to die to try his luck.” Then, with another muttered swear, he turns down the sidewalk and disappears. 

For what feels like an hour, Dean just sits there, staring at the opposite wall.

Then, for the first time in a very long time, he starts thinking about the future.

 

**January 26th, 2014**

Things are bad. But things are different. Dean can see and hear clearly– he can’t taste or smell that clearly, but he’s working on it. But even now when things are different Dean wants to get away. The minute he’s eliminated Dean gets to his feet and, after one last glare at Roman and Seth, makes a beeline to the back. He doesn’t change out of his gear or get any of his stuff, just finding the nearest service exit and getting outside.

He barely feels the chill despite it being twenty degrees or so, operating on autopilot as he scans the back of the venue for his old, familiar hiding place. It doesn’t take him long to find a dumpster and takes him hitting it only once for him to hear that it’s empty. He’s up, over, and inside in a matter of seconds, too full of conflicting, poisonous emotions to even think of closing the top.

His senses are clear, but his thoughts aren’t– They’re a muddled mess, shifting around between reminding him that he deserved that, roaring that he was going to _kill_ Roman, worrying that things were getting worse like they had been since October, panicking about needing to get _away_ from this because this was going to _hurt_ , and insisting that the _point_ of being in here was that it was enclosed dark and quiet and he really should calm the fuck down.

His thoughts roar on like this for he doesn’t know how long as he claws at his hair, bites down hard on his lip, and every now and again smacks his head back against the dumpster wall. But they all go silent when a familiar voice sighs, “Oh what the Hell are you doing back in _here?_ ”

Dean’s eyes shoot open. He looks up. An exhausted and battered CM Punk is staring down at him, perched on the edge of the dumpster and looking at him with a disappointed look Dean hasn’t thought about in a very long time.

Things had gotten so complicated and messy between The Shield and CM Punk that Dean had started to forget why he’d thought he had a chance in the WWE in the first place (sure, he’d gotten sidetracked and had needed an extra kick from Seth and Roman to get back on track, but he’d gotten there). He’d tried to pay Punk back, first with one Hell of a match at an FCW house show then by watching his back with the rest of The Shield, but when Seth said they were done with Punk there was little Dean could or had really wanted to do about that. 

Punk is the one who made him think he could get here. But Seth is the one that made him want to stay. So Seth kind of outranked him.

“Thought I told you I didn’t want to see you in another dumpster,” Punk remarks, reaching a hand down in for Dean to take.

Dean takes it, muttering, “Thought you’d forgotten about that.”

“I never forget a drugged out idiot,” Punk snickers, pulling Dean out, “Besides, after seeing your stupid face almost every show it made it harder _not_ to remember who you were.”

Dean tries to laugh but mostly just snorts. It’s now that he notices Punk is in street clothes, so he asks, “Rumble’s over?”

Punk nods; “Has been for an hour.”

“You win?”

Punk just shakes his head. Dean’s not sure if it would be appropriate or not to tell him he had a good match or say he was sorry, so he just asks, “So… What’s next?”

Punk starts walking slowly out into the lot; “I’ve been thinking about that for a while now. Ever since I got here I’ve been thinking about what’s next. When I first got here I was just glad to be here but then. Well, I was _here_. There’s nowhere to go but here.”

Dean nods; He knows. This is the biggest game in town– once you’ve been here, nothing else compares, there’s no higher you can go.

“So,” Punk goes on, “I guess I thought if I was gonna make it work here, if this is the highest I could go, I could make this place better. I could _change_ things. This place is good but it can be so much _more_ and it’s gotten so _lost_. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, every single minute of every single day since I got here but it’s been almost ten years and…”

In the moonlight Punk finally looks as old and as tired as he always had been; “I didn’t change a goddamn thing, did I?”

Dean says nothing. He isn’t going to lie.

Punk lets out a long sigh; “The Straight Edge Society, the pipe bombs, walking out with the title… None of it mattered. Nothing I’ve done has made a bit of difference.”

Finally, Dean says something; “You saved my life.”

Punk’s smile is shallow and brittle; “Really now?”

Dean nods; “I would’ve died in that dumpster if you hadn’t pulled me out of it. If you hadn’t made me think I could do it I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have met Seth and Roman… I hate them sometimes, but… they’ve made me better… Oh yeah, I’m like. Ninety-nine percent clean now, since you told me you wouldn’t wrestle a no-good junkie.”

Punk snickers again; “Did you _really_ do that just so you could wrestle me?”

Dean can’t help but smile; “Kinda, yeah. That and Roman had a heart attack the first time he saw me using and told me he’d kill me before the drugs could if he saw me do that again. I mean it’s still rough but with that in mind it’s a little easier.”

Punk’s smile is wide and real, and right then in that moment Dean knows this is the last time they’re going to meet like this. He had Punk’s number three years ago– too passionate to stand idle and too cynical to be satisfied. There was no way he could’ve lasted here.

Seems like Punk had finally learned how to cut and run.

Punk claps him on the shoulder; “Good luck, kid. With that _and_ with your brothers.”

“They’re seeming like the harder fight these days,” Dean mutters, eyes fixed on the moon.

Punk shrugs; “You’ll part ways with them one way or another. That’s just how it goes. Nobody ever got famous in this business by staying in a team.”

Dean feels a chill, and it’s not from the twenty degree weather; “I don’t want to lose them.”

“Never said you had to,” Punk replies, “You can part ways without losing each other. But you _are_ gonna part ways.”

Dean shakes his head and smiles over at Punk; “Good luck, man. Been a long time since you or I was out in the real world– who _knows_ what’s there.”

Punk smirks at him one final time over his shoulder as he walks away; “I’m looking forward to finding out.”

Dean watches Punk walk all the way to his car and drive away. He stays out there, mapping every mile of the car’s long drive from Pittsburgh to Chicago in his head. He wonders how long it will take before AJ leaves to join him. He wonders about a lot of things before Seth and Roman find him out there.

They both come primed looking for arguments, bickering and scowling at each other, but seeing him of all people quiet and still and thoughtful takes the wind out of their sails. They anxiously look between each other to him and back again. Roman fidgets in place, the embodiment of energy with no place to go.

Seth’s the first one to speak up; “Dean? Are you okay? Is this about the Rumble beca–“

“Punk left,” Dean states simply, turning to look Seth in the eyes. “For good.”

Seth and Roman open their mouths, but can’t find anything to say. They slowly grow as still as Dean and can only stare off into the distance along with him. He wonders if they’re thinking about the same things he is. He wonders they’re worrying about how long things are going to last, if this was the first sign of things falling to pieces. He wonders if they’re begging anything that’d listen to be merciful and let this ( _this moment, this night, this idea that they can have the gold while still having each other, this anything and this everything_ ) last just a little bit longer and end quietly.

 

A cold wind blows through, forcing a shudder out of Dean and snapping him out of his reverie.

Of course they aren’t thinking about all that. Why would they be?

Dean knows his brothers better than that.


End file.
